Walking aid for the aged and the walk-handicapped is often carried out in the form of cooperation approach between the patient and the physical therapist. One reason for the effectiveness of the above aid method utilizing person to person communication is that walking aid functions matching situations can be created from one minute to the next while the patient and the physical therapist adapt their physical motions to each other through communication. In the musical kineto-therapy for example, the music played by the therapist and the physical motion of the patient are matched each other in rhythm and timing intended for improving physical kinetic function, and its effectiveness is now drawing attention.
As a currently common aid system, one using bio-feedback may be named. This is a system with which the biological signal such as the myoelectric potential that the patient himself cannot perceive is fed back as recognizable sensory information to help the patient consciously control his own motion and acquire motion capability. On the other hand, actually a number of incidents have been reported that, while the effect is seen while the patient is treated with the feedback therapy, continuation of the effect is not confirmed after the treatment.
Along with the development of robotics, an aid system is also proposed to carry out aid with dynamic actuators mounted on the human body. For example, there is a system related to the motor-operated artificial arm and the motor-operated artificial leg that control the motors according to myoelectric potentials. Lately a system serving as a power assist device has been developed that is directly attached to the leg to assist the walking motion. While the above system may be seen as a kind of the above bio-feedback, direct, dynamic operation of the physical motion is its characteristic.
On the other hand, the inventors have already proposed a method of controlling the tempo of motion such as walking using rhythm stimulus synchronized with the physical motion. The method is to sense the motion rhythm of a moving person with a sensor, a pacemaker produces timing according to the difference between the sensed motion rhythm and its target value, and feed it back as a rhythm stimulus through a headphone or the like to the motion tempo of the moving person.